using link (as file) for chapters in a book ms.

[John McGhie]

Ooops... I mis-spaked...

Ahhhh.... At last I have been able to replicate your problems

OK, the problem with inserting the linked file was due to the fact that you
did not have a paragraph mark after the previous linked file and before the
endnotes.

This means there was no terminator for the INCLUDETEXT field. Word inhibits
the placement of a field within a field, because that would corrupt the
document.

That's not what happened there. In fact, Word DID add the link, but it
added it WITHIN the previous linked file INCLUDETEXT field. When you saved
and closed the document all was well, but when you reopened the document,
Word updated all of the linked file fields, replacing their text and
overwriting the addition of the newly-added field.

When Word updates a field, the text result within it is completely replaced.
The formatting properties of a field will be remembered and reapplied if you
include the MERGEFORMAT switch, but the content itself is replaced. So if
you nest a link within a link, it will be wiped out on document reopen.

Sorry about that: brain-fade. The cure is the same...

You need to add a paragraph (blank will do) after each included file. After
that your links will be added and will show up in Edit Links. If you run
with all the non-printing characters shown in Normal View, and Field Shading
set to Always, you will be able to see the problem.

My apologies for a careless description...

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Ronald Florence]

John,

The passion of your defense of Word is impressive, but your description
of the workflow of writing a book suggests to me that you're talking
about long corporate/NGO/government reports or self-published books --
both of which may have the printed size and format of a book, but are
not what I and other book-authors mean by the term "book." The missing
ingredient in your description is the publisher. Authors write books;
publishers handle the copy-editing, design, production, printing,
marketing, sales, distribution, publicity, and promotion. Word might be
a fine tool for long corporate reports, and it might even be an
acceptable tool for a self-published book or for specialized publishers
that accept camera-ready copy, if the author does not mind Word's
relatively crude output (compared to a real typesetting program like
LaTeX). As a tool for authors to write books for trade publishers
(Random House, Viking, HarperCollins, etc.) or for university presses
which market to a general audience (Oxford, Yale, Wisconsin, etc.), Word
sucks! I can honestly say that I do not know a single professional
author who writes trade books and does not detest Word.

Why do we detest it? Because an author writing for a trade or
university press is not trying to produce a finished book. He or she is
writing a manuscript. The publisher will strip out any formatting when
the manuscript is input into their editing and design software. Indeed,
most publisher submission guidelines actually tell an author to not
gussy up the headings, subheadings, chapter titles, or other details --
since it will all be stripped out. So, what the author wants is a tool
that will transparently and easily allow the combination of
chapter-files into a complete manuscript; that will produce a complete
table of contents that adjusts itself to inserted chapters and changes;
that for non-fiction will produce properly punctuated endnotes or
footnotes; and most importantly, that will not "hassle" the author who
is trying to focus on content, not on addressing the quirks of the
program. Read our long exchange in this newsgroup on getting Word to
accept chapter files as links and the inability of Word to do something
as simple as adding the endnotes section into the table of contents and
you'll understand why book authors hate Word.

Why do we use it? I resisted for a long time, writing book manuscripts
for Random House, HarperCollins, St. Martins, and other trade presses in
troff, LaTeX (using emacs/auctex), and finally in LyX, which is an
elegant front-end to LaTeX. The manuscripts were beautiful -- if you've
never compared LaTeX output to Word output, you may not recognize how
ugly Word output is -- but as I've explained above, trade and university
publishers are not interested in beautifully typeset output. The house
software that trade presses use for editing, design, and production
in-house increasingly accepts only PC word-processing formats as input.
This is, no doubt, a consequence of the Microsoft/PC monopoly of
corporate computing. The big trade publishers are now all parts of
large conglomerates, and the corporations have consolidated IT until it
reaches down to editorial and design departments.

I'd be delighted to read about the "techniques" you use to write what
you call books and why you think Word is the "best" tool for writing
them. I, and I suspect most other professional authors I know, would be
particularly interested in hearing how to make Word behave as a
functional tool for the workflow of an author preparing a manuscript for
a trade or university publisher -- which seems to be a very different
process from the workflow of your writing.

 

[Ronald Florence]

You need to place your endnotes heading above the Endnotes separator line
and it will work.

I have no problem putting a heading into the manuscript for the endnote
section. What I want is for the endnotes to be picked up in the table
of contents. Doing that by putting a "Heading 1" heading at the head of
the endnotes section works, but breaks the insertion of additional files
as links. To get additional files inserted, I would need to remove the
heading from the endnotes section, insert the files as links, then
re-insert the heading in the endnotes section.

If that isn't "flaky" behavior on the part of Word, we need a new
definition of flaky.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Ronald:

Well, I am sorry I didn't describe it clearly...

The presence or absence of a "Heading" in the endnotes section has nothing
to do with the linking of files.

The reason the files are not linking is because you are accidentally
inserting the linking field into the middle of another linking field. Go to
Preferences>View>Field Codes and you will see what I mean.

If you have the code for one linked field inserted in the middle of the
result for another linking field, everything works fine until you re-open
the document.

At that point, the link fields update, wiping out the code for the second
linking field.

If you insert the heading IN the endnotes section, you are effectively
inserting it into a separate document. It is invisible to the TOC generator
there: the TOC generator looks ONLY inside the main text. So the heading
cannot appear in the TOC.

If you insert the heading into the body text of the document, right ahead of
the endnotes section, it will just work. This is not a troublesome area of
Word: it works fine. It *is* a professional documentation area of Word, and
you do have to know what you are doing. But it's not flaky.

Work in Normal View (that's important) -- Normal View reveals all manner of
extra information and mark-up that is hidden in Page Layout view. Normal
View is built to enable professionals to see everything that is going on in
a document so they can see what they are doing. It is also built to be
economical on CPU power so you can use it to work in very large documents.

Normal View is not appropriate for short simple documents where unskilled
authors can work a lot faster in WYSIWYG in Page Layout view. But it's the
professional's weapon of choice for documents above 200 pages. Flip into
Page Layout View to perfect your pagination after you get the document fully
assembled.

Sorry to keep on with this, but I know it works, I tested it by doing
exactly what you are trying to do...

Cheers

I have no problem putting a heading into the manuscript for the endnote
section. What I want is for the endnotes to be picked up in the table
of contents. Doing that by putting a "Heading 1" heading at the head of
the endnotes section works, but breaks the insertion of additional files
as links. To get additional files inserted, I would need to remove the
heading from the endnotes section, insert the files as links, then
re-insert the heading in the endnotes section.

If that isn't "flaky" behavior on the part of Word, we need a new
definition of flaky.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Ronald Florence]

The reason the files are not linking is because you are accidentally
inserting the linking field into the middle of another linking field. Go to
Preferences>View>Field Codes and you will see what I mean.

The problem is not that I am "accidentally inserting the linking field
into the middle of another linking field." I have checked this with
Preferences->View->Field Codes.

If you insert the heading into the body text of the document, right ahead of
the endnotes section, it will just work. This is not a troublesome area of
Word: it works fine. It *is* a professional documentation area of Word, and
you do have to know what you are doing. But it's not flaky.

As I have written several times, I can get the heading for the endnotes
section to show up in the Table of Contents. What I cannot do is to
insert another linked file between the last linked chapter file and the
endnotes when I have put a heading in for the endnotes section. If I
take the heading for the endnotes section out, I can insert another
chapter file as a link that will show up in Edit->Links.

If you could describe how to maintain a heading for the endnotes section
and insert additional chapter files ahead of the endnotes, I would much
appreciate it. As I noted earlier in this correspondence, I have been
working as necessary in so-called Normal view and with Show ¶ (pilcrow)
turned on so I can see the various formatting symbols.

It seems remarkable that inserting a heading for the endnotes "*is* a
professional documentation area of Word" and that I have to "know what I
am doing" to accomplish something that trivial. This old author
obviously does not quite know what he is doing.

Thanks once again for your patience.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

John is saying that you should put the header for the endnotes section _not_
inside (at the beginning of) the endnotes section itself, but rather at the
very end of the main text section, just _before_ the separator line for the
endnotes section. Then delete the separator.

Are you doing that already? I know you've said that you can get the endnotes
header into the TOC - but _are you doing it this way_? You haven't said so.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Ronald Florence]

John is saying that you should put the header for the endnotes section _not_
inside (at the beginning of) the endnotes section itself, but rather at the
very end of the main text section, just _before_ the separator line for the
endnotes section. Then delete the separator.

Are you doing that already? I know you've said that you can get the endnotes
header into the TOC - but _are you doing it this way_? You haven't said so.

Yes. The header for the endnotes section is before the endnotes
separator. The question is how do I insert another file as a link
before the header for the endnotes, and have that file function
correctly as a link, i.e., show up in Edit->Links and not disappear when
I update fields?

 

[Bill Weylock]

Please forgive this question if it ignores the obvious.

Why don¹t you simply wait until you¹re finished with the document to put a
header on the endnotes?


Best,


- Bill

Yes. The header for the endnotes section is before the endnotes
separator. The question is how do I insert another file as a link
before the header for the endnotes, and have that file function
correctly as a link, i.e., show up in Edit->Links and not disappear when
I update fields?

Panther 10.3.6
Office 2004
Windows XP Pro SP2
Office 2003

 

[Ronald Florence]

Why don’t you simply wait until you’re finished with the document to put
a header on the endnotes?

During the two years it typically takes me to write a book I
occasionally send the incomplete manuscript-in-progress to colleagues,
my agent, or my editor. They will want to check references and would
appreciate having the notes listed in the table of contents. Yes, I can
delete the heading of the notes section each time I want to insert
another file as link into the master file and then reinsert the notes
heading before I send out the manuscript. It would be more convenient
to not have to resort to a kludge.

When I discovered I could not add a new linked file I assumed that I was
missing a simple step or not doing something right. I'm still hoping
that is the case.

 

[Bill Weylock]

So! A trouble-maker, huh?

I figured something like that.

Wonder if something weird like putting a blank reference under the Endnotes
header might make Word treat it as part of the whole document instead of
evil intruder?


Best,


- Bill

During the two years it typically takes me to write a book I
occasionally send the incomplete manuscript-in-progress to colleagues,
my agent, or my editor. They will want to check references and would
appreciate having the notes listed in the table of contents. Yes, I can
delete the heading of the notes section each time I want to insert
another file as link into the master file and then reinsert the notes
heading before I send out the manuscript. It would be more convenient
to not have to resort to a kludge.

When I discovered I could not add a new linked file I assumed that I was
missing a simple step or not doing something right. I'm still hoping
that is the case.

Panther 10.3.6
Office 2004
Windows XP Pro SP2
Office 2003

 

[Marc Bizer]

I may be prejudiced, as I was a beta-tester for EndNote-8, but unlike
Word, I've found EndNote to be reliable and predictable in its behavior.

This doesn't seem to be the accepted opinion about EndNote 8 (I too was
a beta tester). This is a judicious post from the EndNote-interest list:

Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 14:42:27 -0500 (EST)
From: Gijs.Kessler[mailto:[email protected]]
Subject: Sender: (e-mail address removed)

Forced to migrate from the discontinued ProCite for the Macintosh to
some other bibliographic database application I just spent several days
testing three possible alternatives and I thought that my experiences
could be of interest to subscribers of this list.

These observations regard only the Macintosh platform and should not be
taken as any indication whatsoever regarding the usability of the
mentioned applications under Windows. The testing was done on an iBook
G3 600 Mhz, MacOS 10.3.7, 256 MB RAM.

Testing involved demo-versions of three applications: Endnote 8
(http://www.endnote.com), Bookends 7.7.5 (http://www.sonnysoftware.com)
and Sente 2.0.2 (http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/). In addition to
these three applications there are some, mainly open-source or free
bibliographic database management applications belonging to the BibTeX
family, which is a bit a world apart, plus some entirely web-based
platform-independent solutions, which I have not considered because
they do not allow one to work with one's references without a permanent
internet-connection.

Sente is mainly oriented toward bibliographic management with heavy
reliance on the web and web-sources. If this is your main thing, then
it might be worthwhile having a proper look at this application. For
this review Sente has not been extensively tested because it lacks a
Cite While You Write feature, which was one of my requirements for a
new application.

Remain Endnote and Bookends, similar in concept both to each other and
to the now defunct ProCite, although with important differences.
Endnote is the most universal of the two, offering a wide variety of
reference types and separate fields for data entry as well as
ready-made Word-Endnote templates for preparing manuscripts in
accordance with the guidelines of many publishers and journals.
Furthermore Endnote is Unicode compatible, whereas Bookends is not yet
(version 8 which will support Unicode is currently being beta-tested
and will probably be available in a not too distant future). Endnote's
extra features come at a cost which is almost three times as high as
that of Bookends though. Also Endnote lacks two features which Bookends
has: a "group" function similar to the one in ProCite, which allows one
to mark sets of records within a database as groups for later
reference, export or targeted searches, and Cite While You Write
integration with two other word processors apart from Word: Mellel, and
Nisus Writer (Express). Both can scan documents generated by other Word
processors for citations, though. Endnote 8 is MacOS X only, Bookends
is available in a Classic version and an OS X version. Endnote comes
with a larger assortment of import filters and output styles than
Bookends, but both are mainly oriented toward the sciences, whereas
scholars working in the humanities will have two write their own
filters and styles under both.

Of course many factors bear upon the choice which people will make for
the one or the other application, and everybody should test both
alternatives before making this choice, but as a rule of thumb I would
give the following advice:

- - If the level of bibliographic detail you need does not exceed the
basic data necessary for generating citations and bibliographies
accompanying books and articles (author, editor, book title, chapter
title, journal name, article title, publisher, place of publication,
year of publication, page numbers, volume and issue number) plus
reference information like keywords, notes, URL, abstract and call
number - choose Bookends. Apart from being considerably cheaper, it
does its job flawlessly and offers the same versatility as Endnote in
formatting in-text citations and bibliographies in word-processing
documents, including the possibility to automatically generate three
different citation forms (first citation, subsequent citation and full
bibliography entry), which is a prerequisite for scholars in the
humanities.

Note especially:

- - If you need a greater level of bibliographic detail or, so far (but
this is to change, see above), you need Unicode capabilities, choose
Endnote. Endnote allows for an infinitely greater variety in data entry
and reference type customisation than both the current and the future
version of Bookends. All the more because of its great potential it is
a great pity though that Endnote is marred by a great many bugs,
sluggishness, and an insufficiently thoroughly edited user
documentation. Bugs that appeared during testing included one
"Application unexpectedly Quit"-error, several "Generic service error
messages", frequent failures to save changes when editing output
styles, necessitating creating incrementally numbered versions of the
same output style through the "Save As" backdoor to reach the final
result, and recurrent problems in the redrawing and resizing of windows
when editing styles, necessitating complicated manoeuvres to see what
one is actually typing. Endnote's sluggishness could be related to its
very demanding system requirements of a G4 processor or higher
(although the application also runs on a G3-processor as testified by
this reviewer's experience), unparallelled on the Mac-platform and
outstripping even those of the latest version of the operating system.
The User documentation has obviously been rather hastily rewritten from
the Windows version up to the point where it refers the user to locate
files through the Windows explorer. Once these issues will be addressed
by the developer Endnote will be a fine programme, though.

Hope this has been of some use,


Gijs Kessler
International Institute of Social History
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

--Marc

 

[Ronald Florence]

I am tardy in replying to Marc Bizer and his citation of the very
informative post from Gijs Kiessler at the International Institute of
Social History (Amsterdam) because I was in Egypt, where the Internet
cafe connections are not up to discussing the subtleties of Endnote and
Word.

Kiessler's notes are very useful. I'm instinctively sympathetic to his
comments because I spent the summer of 1967 doing research at the IISG
(abbreviation of the Dutch name of the Institute); they were a
remarkably well-organized and welcoming institution, and his notes
reflect a very coherent program of testing source organizers. I have no
experience with ProCite or BookEnds, but would like to offer a few
additional comments on Endnote 8.

- One strong point of EndNote is the excellent web interface to
libraries. I use it to do my own bibliographic research at Harvard,
Yale, and Brown and find it quick, easy, and reliable.

- For my own work (history and novels, now on Middle East subjects)
the Unicode capability of EndNote 8 is invaluable. I can cite Hebrew
and Arabic sources in transliterations with underdots and macrons as
well as various East European languages, and the Unicode bibliographic
data from the libraries is picked up correctly and effortlessly.

- Although the bibliographic capabilities of EndNote do not match the
various BibTeX source managers I used previously with LaTeX and LyX and
their standard (as opposed to proprietary) format, the combination of
Unicode and the interface to libraries makes up for the sometimes broken
style sheets and the misfeatures I'll list below, to the degree that for
me EndNote is actually more convenient than the BibTeX tools I've used
previously.

EndNote 8 does have some misfeatures. Many were pointed out to the
developers by me and other beta-testers. In my case, they said that
what I called bugs were actually "features" or "necessary" -- which is
typically developer-talk for "we're too lazy to do this right."

- EndNote 8 is slower than its predecessor and seems to require
substantial cpu power. I use it on a 1.5Mz Powerbook-17 and a 1.0Mz
iBook-12 and don't find the slowness outrageous. Since I'm using it
with Word 2004, which is also very slow and a cpu-hog, I guess I've
gotten used to the pokiness.

- The user interface is in at least one important place unnecessarily
cumbersome. To enter a reference with a page number the user needs to
go to the search dialogue and select the source, then bring up the
Ctrl-6 "edit" note dialogue to select the page number. It should be
possible to do both steps in a single dialogue. EndNote refused to fix
this in beta-testing.

- EndNote 8 uses dumb "typewriter" quotes in references instead of
proper left and right quotes. When I suggested that it be fixed, they
answered with some gobbled nonsense. This is a bug and requires that
the user do a global search & replace in the manuscript.

- Some of the output styles are incomplete or simply broken. I've had
to make a number of changes in the Chicago 15th style to get it right.

All of that said, I will go back to my original observation: EndNote 8
is at least predictable in its behavior and reliable, and it does not
seem to have the many undocumented misfeatures of Word (like the problem
of trying to insert another file as link if there is a heading on the
endnotes section of a document, which started this thread). Of course,
as John McPhie has pointed out, it is unfair to compare a relatively
simple, limited-purpose program like EndNote to a bloated,
try-to-be-everything package like Word.